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Hey Jane
Artist: Low Millions
Album: Ex-Girlfriends
Year: 2004
♥: I write this in May, lush green against grey skies May -- because this album is May.

It was May 2004, when I first listened to it as my first year of cegep drew to a close, when I was first coming to terms with what mattered in my life: that is, not settling, never settling, feeling intensely and finding music to help me do so. I heard a clip of "Hey Jane" at the end of a CTV news broadcast, advertising Leonard Cohen's son's new band (yep, our lead singer here is none other than Adam Cohen!), and it was instant love.

It was May 2009, the Thursday that ridiculous grammar class first started -- getting ready for a stunning spring day in my gorgeous Claremont apartment, blasting this CD and feeling a spark of life -- sitting on lower campus after class and texting frantically, trying to organize the first of many Sangria Thursdays. Blissful, in the sun -- head tilted back, headphones loud, vibrant.

It was May 2007, when I had a crush on someone who was not my boyfriend and I couldn't really deal with what I was feeling. My mom and V left the house to pick up one of V's friends from the airport, leaving me and Freyja (and Mysti) to our own devices. I put on this album and got drunk alone for the first time (on Poppers or something equally as sugary and terrible). I remember, better than anything else that night, sitting on the deck with a bowl of strawberries, this song blasting out through the screen door, Freyja lying beside me and sniffing the air with her ears up -- dusk falling -- a warm, spring- and alcohol-induced buzz in my limbs -- standing up to dance to this song, throw my fists in the air and sing at the trees. That night, still and forever, goes down as one of the best in my life.


And it is May 2012, as my beautiful Freyja slowly leaves me to (really) drink alone. That dog has been with me for seven years, and our bond was always strongest as school finished and I spent spring and summer days on end in Rigaud. I will miss her so much I feel weak inside when I think about it. To not have her jumping up on my bed at night and curling into the back of my knees -- to not be able to smell the inside of her ears, hear her sing with Mysti, get knocked over by her running at me when I pull into the driveway after a week downtown -- it is beyond devastating. We will never play our game again, where she bites my hand through a piece of fabric and growls -- then stops abruptly and starts licking as soon as she notices skin. With her goes a big piece of my heart -- one I thought had years left to grow.

But.
It is May 2012, and I am falling deep and desperate into something I can't even pretend to control. Depressing songs, ones that make me sob, just won't cut it.
"Hey Jane," like the rest of the tracks on this album, is a love-lost song, but I've never really been able to experience it that way. Musically, anyway, it's pure love song, to me: tinged with all the dark parts of love, all the desperation and depth. Every line hits hard, a sense of longing that's become all too familiar to me in the past month, as foreign as that seems and as much as I never thought I'd relate. How things change.

"I wanna go out into the night and taste it" is my favourite, of course:
because I love that no matter what happens, no matter how bleak things get, I will always want to GET UP and GO OUT and LIVE. I can feel guilty about that or I can accept that life is dichotomous, and bliss matters as much as desolation.
This song is happy. It is late spring nights with flavoured vodka drinks, friends and trees and setting sun and tasting the night, despite the loss.


So I will miss Freyja, but what is really beautiful about death is that it makes it very difficult to ignore how beautiful, incredible, life is.
And mine, May 2012, is supernova after exploding supernova.
So "I raise my glass and sing along", one more time -- in tribute to Freyja,
and to you.